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Growing evidence suggests that news media significantly contribute to disseminating, endorsing, or merely increasing the visibility of populist rhetoric. While a large amount of literature has focused on the type and volume of news coverage provided to populist actors and parties (populism through the media), there is more scarcity of knowledge regarding the media's orientation towards populism (populism by the media), partly due to a lack of systematic comparative evidence. To address this shortfall, we introduce a novel, large-scale comparative dataset, the Media Populism (M-POP) expert survey (including a website and a ShinyApp). This survey provides metrics for media populism across 38 national and subnational contexts globally, thereby offering an empirically grounded evaluation of the primary theoretical interpretations of media populism. In the article, we detail the dataset, evaluate the advantages and drawbacks of using an expert survey method, and conduct a systematic analysis of the determinants of media populism, particularly focusing on its right-wing manifestation, to validate our metrics. We then explore two empirical applications of the M-POP dataset in a comprehensive comparative manner, tackling key questions in political communication literature: the interplay between media populism and tabloid journalism, and the correlation between individual populist sentiments and media populism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On paper, women politicians should be punished more than men when they go negative during election campaigns. Yet, empirical evidence in this sense is surprisingly scarce, and findings offer a muddled picture. In this article, we argue that existing research has, so far, neglected to consider a fundamental intervening factor: the role of the context, and specifically the level of descriptive representation of women in politics. Using novel large-scale data for 700+ candidates having competed in 150+ elections in 94 countries worldwide, we test – and confirm – the expectation that women are especially punished for negative campaigning in countries with low descriptive representation of women in politics. This pattern does not hold in more gender-equal contexts. Additional observational evidence from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) shows that this electoral punishment is likely due to voters expressing lower likability of women candidates (compared to men) when the former go negative in countries where women are less established in political leadership positions. We suggest that inconsistent results in previous studies are likely due to the lack of comparative focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political incivility—that is, treating political opponents with disrespect—and its consequences are increasingly investigated. This article examines the effect of incivility on message persuasiveness and the moderating role of populist attitudes and personality traits. We test these relationships via original experimental data collected in Switzerland (Study 1, N = 1340) and the United States (Study 2, N = 1820, preregistered). In both studies, participants were asked their opinion about a controversial political issue, presented with persuasive information framed either civilly or uncivilly, and asked again their opinion about the issue to assess whether they changed their mind. Results of a between‐subject design show that incivility does not necessarily undermine the message's persuasiveness, contrary to what we expected. Notably, uncivil messages resonated more with those respondents exhibiting higher levels of populist attitudes (Study 2) and darker personality traits (both studies). Our results further suggest a connection between incivility, message congruence, and particularly cultural context, which warrants further investigations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do parties campaign differently in different circumstances? Research seems to suggest that parties do indeed engage in harsh interparty attacks and fearmongering during ‘second-order’ elections, such as European elections/elections to the European Parliament (EP), perhaps even to the same extent as during national elections. However, to the best of our knowledge, the differences in the campaign strategies used by parties in national and European elections have never been assessed systematically. In this article, we compare the content of election campaigns (negative tone, fear appeals, enthusiasm appeals) by 150+ parties across 28 countries that participated in the 2019 elections to the European Parliament and at least one national election between 2016 and 2020. Triangulating two independent expert surveys (EPEES_19 and NEGex) we show that, contrary to our expectations, parties do not use more negative campaigning during European elections. However, more extreme parties tend to use a more negative tone and fewer enthusiasm appeals during European than national elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More aggressive campaigning styles focusing on criticizing opponents (negativity) or using inappropriate language to vilify opponents (incivility) tend to be disliked by voters, and remain thus risky for parties facing off in competitive elections. Backlashes against attackers often cancel out any dent the attacks may leave in the support for the targets. Yet, research on the conditions under which these backlashes are more likely to happen remains fragmentary. In this article, we argue that the nature of the electoral competition – specifically, the presence of viable alternative parties for voters to choose from – matters. Voters could be more likely to withdraw political support from the attacker when such alternatives exist. We test whether the availability and ideological attractiveness of alternatives intervene to explain the backlash effect associated with negativity and incivility, at the election, party, and voter levels. We do so comparatively in the context of the 2019 European Parliament elections in 27 EU countries, by linking a cross-sectional post-election survey (N = 18,790) with an expert survey covering the campaigning strategies of 175 parties that participated in the election across the continent. Estimating mixed effects multi-level models, we find support for the moderating effect of alternatives at the voter-level; voters who have at least equally attractive alternatives available to them are less likely to support parties that go negative than voters to whom the attacking party is the most viable option. Alternatives do not seem to play a major role, however, at the party and election levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite decades of research on the nature and characteristics of populism, and on how political actors interpret populist attitudes, the study of how the public identify populist politicians remains a largely unexplored topic. Is populism in the eye of the beholder? What causes voters to perceive a political actor as populist? Is there any systematic heterogeneity in the evaluation of candidates among citizens according to their individual characteristics? We fill this gap by analysing what characteristics of politicians, and the political statements they make, drive citizens to classify them as populist. Furthermore, we investigate how the cognitive, ideological and attitudinal profiles of citizens shape their perceptions. To this end, we report results of a conjoint experiment embedded in a survey administered to a nationally representative sample of Italian citizens. Respondents were asked to evaluate different political statements by politicians, of whom we manipulated a variety of relevant attributes (e.g., their ideological profile, gender, previous occupation). Results indicate two clear trends: (i) More than the profile of politicians, what matters for their identification as populist is their rhetoric. (ii) The cognitive (with the partial exception of education) and ideological profiles of respondents are largely inconsequential. At the same time, populist voters are substantively less likely to identify populism as such. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about why candidates decide to make use of emotional messages when campaigning for a political office, and under which conditions this is more likely to happen. We focus on the use of fear and enthusiasm appeals and assume that these are a function of profile of candidates and the nature of the context in which the election takes place. We use a new large-scale comparative dataset which includes information about campaigning strategies for 636 candidates having competed in 133 presidential and parliamentary elections in 101 countries between June 2016 and March 2020, based on judgments of 2000+ domestic and international experts. Our results show that candidates benefitting from a comparative advantage (incumbents and frontrunners) tend to rely on enthusiasm appeals, more extreme candidates prefer fear to enthusiasm, and more competitive races tend to foster the use of fear appeals. These findings have important implications for electoral competition, communication theory, and political marketing. All data and materials are openly available for replication. Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15377857.2021.1930327. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]